War and single-term presidents- A curse on the White House

Sunday, July 6, 2003

By Ed Stockly, Los Angeles Times

Call it the curse of the wartime president. Not a single U.S. president who has led the country into a major war has gone on to serve another full term in the White House. Not James Madison after the War of 1812. Not Woodrow Wilson after World War I.

Not Lyndon Johnson after Vietnam. And not George H.W. Bush, who won a popular war but was unable to win over everyday Americans a second time. Will the current President Bush, who is expected to raise record amounts of money in his re-election bid, be able to buck this long and curious trend in American history? Every president who has led this country into full-scale war has paid a heavy price politically and personally. Most chose not to run for re-election and, upon leaving office, saw their vision for America rejected by the voters, their party defeated and their rivals elected. Some left office with shattered reputations, fading into a marginalized obscurity and irrelevance. And the few who survived grueling re-election campaigns were swiftly cut down by illness or assassination.

"Sometimes the people who lead you in war are not necessarily the people the public wants to lead in peace," said Jerald Podair, an assistant professor of American history at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis.

Founding Father James Madison, the fourth president, saw his presidency falter after he reluctantly asked Congress to declare war on England in 1812, a conflict often called the second war of independence in large part because England kept drafting Americans into its navy. "This was not a war that helped Madison or his presidency," said Podair. "Madison didn't want the war, it was a very unpopular war." And it didn't go well. Madison was forced to flee the White House to escape a British invasion, said Podair, which diminished his stature and reputation in the eyes of the public.

Following the two-term tradition established by George Washington, Madison chose not to run for a third term and left office in 1817. Unlike the wartime presidents who followed, Madison was succeeded in the White House by a political ally (James Monroe) and lived to see old age, dying at 85.

The other five presidents who survived their final term of office after committing the United States to war saw their plans for the nation rejected by voters, and three of them died within a few years of leaving the White House.

After winning the Mexican War in 1848, James K. Polk, a Southern Democrat, saw the White House go to the Whig party, which promptly quashed his plans for expanding the slave states westward. Wilson's hopes for an American role in the League of Nations were defeated and he was replaced by a Republican. Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson were followed by Republicans after the Korea and Vietnam conflicts respectively, and both saw their liberal domestic agendas derailed. Even George H.W. Bush's call for a New World Order of cooperation among nations seems to have crumbled, with his son waging war without U.N. support.